Does the world really need another liqueur? America’s growing interest in cocktails has brought in all kinds of liqueurs, digestifs, and bitters in the past couple of years. Some of them are welcome additions, but some of them, frankly, suck. And there are enough centuries-old recipes made by isolated French monks that inventing a new liqueur that’s actually good (or actually new) seem nearly impossible.

But every once in a while, an invention comes along that’s worth noticing. Kamm & Sons Ginseng Spirit was concocted by a London bartender named
Alex Kammerling just two years back. It isn’t available here yet (Kammerling says they’re hoping to get it “through the red tape” and on this side of the Atlantic by the end of 2013), but I’m just putting it on your radar, since I’m guessing it’ll be everywhere once it hits the US. I first heard of it from
Scott DeSimon, special projects editor at Bon Appetit. He was hanging out at the South Place Hotel in London late last year, saw it listed as an ingredient on the cocktail menu (mixed with yellow chartreuse, lemon, and honey in a drink called The English Eccentric), and had to try it. And he liked it!

Fast-forward a few months and a couple of phone calls, and I’ve managed to get a bottle of Kamm & Sons in front of me. It’s a curious drink, somewhere between a gin and a liqueur, in flavor, viscosity, and alcohol content. At 33 percent ABV, and with a palate more balanced between sweet and bitter than you’d get in an Italian amaro or a French aperitif, it’s actually more like a cocktail in a bottle than anything. I have to confess that I don’t actually know what straight ginseng tastes like (the Kamm & Sons is made with four types), but there’s a recognizable sharpness from grapefruit zest and sweetness from honey, mixed in with some earthy herbal notes in the middle.

If you do think of this as a complete cocktail, the only thing missing is a little bit of fresh fruit. And, no surprise, that’s how Kammerling recommends drinking it, whether that means just on the rocks with a little bit of lemon, or in a tall drink with fizzy lemonade or a combination of lychee and grapefruit juice. It does, of course, lend itself to more complicated cocktails, too (Kammerling even has a recipe for a Sunshine Mary, with yellow tomato juice and all the normal Bloody fixings), and I’m sure you’ll start seeing it on cocktail menus in America’s better bars as soon as it can be legally sold (and I’d bet money that a few bottles have already been smuggled in).

As for the ginseng itself, most of my experience with the medicinal root comes from those tiny “health drink” bottles they sell at the register at Asian supermarkets (because hey, why not?). Like ginger, it’s considered an appetite stimulant, a blood-flow booster, and a general putter of pep in one’s step, but who knows how well that actually works (especially when it’s floating in a bunch of booze)? I guess I’ll just have to keep drinking to find out.